No Child Left Behind: Federal Funds vs State Sovereignty

States suffering from the nightmare that is “No Child Left Behind,” President G. W. Bush’s 2001 federal education legislation intended to boost productivity and performance of America’s public school students, have been offered a “waiver” from President Obama; unfortunately, there are strings attached. According to Lindsey Burke with The Foundry:

“The waivers actually fail to provide genuine relief to states, instead handing control of local school policy over to the Department of Education. The conditions-based waivers circumvent Congress and represent a significant new executive overreach… One of the most concerning conditions attached to the waivers is the requirement for states to adopt common standards and tests or have their state university approve their standards. None of the states have opted for the latter, as the Obama Administration’s many previous carrots and sticks ($4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants and potential Title I dollars) have already pushed them to begin implementing the Common Core national standards and tests…. Having national organizations and the Department of Education dictating standards and tests will effectively centralize control of the content taught in local schools. It’s an unprecedented and dangerous federal overreach. Circumventing Congress by granting strings-attached waivers from the White House shows a disregard for the legislative process and a not-so-veiled effort to further grow federal control over education.”

With unconstitutional regulations either way, many state legislators are proposing nullification. While state Representatives like Michael Weeden from New Hampshire began with bold statements such as, “I was in fifth grade when this bill was passed and I saw first-hand the ineffectiveness of this bill to lay standards of education, at a high cost to the cities and towns of the state, because they don’t provide adequate funding for their requests… More and more schools are falling into the failed category, and it’s because of the testing, not necessarily the education.”

However, the 61 million dollars that the federal government gives the state of New Hampshire for funding the program has Weeden singing a new tune. “Personally, I’m fiscally conservative, so $60 million is a lot to me.” Weeden said that he had thought the loss of federal funding as a result of HB1413 would be closer to $20 million, and he did not find out about the $60 million figure until the day before he testified in front of the Education Committee. Currently, Weeden is working on drafting an amendment to the bill to lessen the financial impact of HB1413. One option is for New Hampshire to opt out of just certain provisions of No Child Left Behind. That way, some of the federal funding would stay in place, he said.

In other news, Idaho Falls Republican Rep. Linden Bateman says [No Child Left Behind] is so deeply flawed, efforts to rewrite the law [at the federal level] are akin to “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” Bateman’s resolution supports nullifying the law and was advanced Tuesday in the Idaho House.

Will states like Idaho whose legislators are contemplating nullification find the lure of federal money too enticing to pass up as well?

When will principle stand before money in America again?

The truth is that the federal government has no right to fund or regulate education according the the Constitution. The fact that that power is not granted is no accident. There is no way that a group of federal bureaucrats can ascertain the needs of children across America. The whole “one-size-fits-all” public education structure may have been beneficial to those who wished to create a subclass of manual laborers who were proficient in the basics of math and reading, but this system is no longer serving the children of America, and must be done away with.

There must be a paradigm shift, and we must count on our state leaders to do the right thing.

Men like Education Committee Chair Republican Rep. Michael Balboni of New Hampshire seem to get the “big picture.” In response to those who claim the loss of the federal funds would cause too much of a financial hit to the state, Balboni called the Department of Education’s fiscal note “one-sided” and said most of the funding was determined on an annual basis and was not guaranteed for the next year.

“It also failed to account for the money that funded efforts to meet No Child Left Behind standards, he said. Balboni suggested the state might continue to fund the programs that the federal government now pays for. The rest of the funding gap, he said, would be school districts’ responsibility. “It’s still up to the local district how much they want to spend on education, and what do they want to spend it on. And if the federal government doesn’t provide them that money, or the state doesn’t provide them that money, the local folks who decided that program have to be willing to pay for it,” said Balboni.

While Weeden’s bill would withdraw New Hampshire from No Child Left Behind, Balboni takes the extra step to require all contracts between the state and the federal government having to do with No Child Left Behind would be terminated. Any future contracts would have to be approved by the Legislature.

In reality, true education reform can not happen until education is decentralized and returned to the states, cities, and towns. Rep. Balboni should be commended for shedding light on the budgetary excuses being made by his opponents. States’ financial dependency to the federal government has too long been the driving factor in state legislation. States began as sovereign entities, responsible, ultimately, to their citizens and to legislate with their best interests in mind not the interests of the federal government, and the People will not be best-served until state priorities are once again properly aligned.

Sabrina Reynolds [send her mail] is the deputy chapter coordinator for the Utah Tenth Amendment Center. She worked in independent schools for 10 years as an English Literature and U.S. History teacher and is a proponent for parental choice in education.

Last year I watched my state legislature and governor (Utah) bow under pressure from the Obama administration and Utah’s education establishment and take $101 million in stimulus bribery from the $6 billion “Edu Funds” package put forth by Obama. Governor Herbert called a special legislative session just for this cause. I calculated that 80% of the house and senate members voted in favor of taking the money. They said they did it for the children. How does bankrupting our nation help our childrens’ future? How does perpetuating the unconstitutional (socialized) education system help our childrens’ future? The speaker of the House admitted from the floor during her speech that this money was enslaving the children, yet supported taking it anyways. Adding insult to injury was the fact that the Obama administration and the Dept. of Education said that our state legislature had 2 choices: 1-the state legislature would be given the money and distribute it to the school districts how they saw fit; 2-if the state legislature rejected the money, the Dept. of Edu. would distribute the funds to Utah school districts of their own choosing in the amounts they deemed appropriate. TYRANNY! I personally interviewed Governor Herbert and he wouldn’t consider not taking the money on principle because, “If we don’t take it some other state will so we might as well take it.” Enough of this! You nullify this unconstitutional act, do not allow 1 penny to come into the state, and you structure the state’s tax system in a way so that no money goes to the federal Dept. of Education (for this program or anything else). Ultimately, you pull out of the federal education apparatus. Ideally, you allow free choice to reign in education and get government completely out of the picture altogether.

The power to regulate education comes from the General Welfare Clause. In US v. Butler, 297 US 1 (1936) the Supreme Court said:

“The power to confer or withhold unlimited benefits is the power to coerce or destroy. … Those who receive payments will be able to undersell him. The result may well be financial ruin. … The asserted power of choice is illusory.” (p71) … “Until recently no suggestion of the existence of any such power [of general welfare] in the Federal Government has been advanced. The expressions of the framers of the Constitution, the decisions of the court interpreting that instrument, and the writings of great commentators will be searched in vain for any suggestion that there exists in the clause under discussion or elsewhere in the Constitution, the authority whereby every provision and every fair implication from that instrument may be subverted, the independence of the individual states obliterated, and the United States converted into a central government exercising uncontrolled police power in every state of the Union, superseding all local control or regulation of the affairs or concerns of the states.” (p77)

On p. 65 the court contradicted itself, stating that since the foundation of the nation there were sharp differences of opinion, and only now was the court called upon to choose. The court ruled that Congress can tax and spend on anything for the general welfare, but not regulate. (p66)

You are absolutely right. If you look into the history of public education, the whole reason for it was not to give children a good education. It was to indoctrinate the masses and teach them to be “good little citizens” who do what their government leaders tell them to do. The leaders and the elite never planned to send their children to public schools, on the other hand. Those kids were to go to private school and learn how to rule the masses.

The problem with public education is not new. Several years back, my local newspaper ran an editorial article from 1945. It was an editorial on how we need to reform our public schools.

Nullification seems to be the only way to go. Our leaders will never let it go, as it gives them more power.

Teach a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. This is something that has been going on since 1955 that I know of. That was the first year of my schooling and those of my same age bracket seem to be more then happy to allow for the government to be controlling the school system. There are a few exceptions, but very few. As much as I would like to see the government leaving off the education of my grandchildren, just like everything else we have to fight for, I don’t see a win in this situation. Those unelected people working in Washington don’t want to lose any ground that they have worked hard to obtain for the past 60 plus years. They almost have this nation under wraps, so they will not give up control no matter what the public says. We can see that with those ungodly bills passed since the 9/11 false flag incident.

Unfortunately, our Supreme Court is anti-states and pro-Big Brother. They’ll cite some lame precedence to keep it as it is, similar to how they cited some LAME case about Natural Born in Podunketown in 2009 as precedence to allow Mr. Obama to be president despite a FOREIGN father.

Sabrina said ” … true education reform can not happen until education is decentralized and returned to the states, cities, and towns.”.

I could not agree more with your statement. What you’ve proposed is America’s foundation of federalism. Sadly it has been subverted by big government’s societal engineers and their wannabe socialist supporters.

In Reality no child left behind really means no child will go untrained by the minions of stupidity, that out there in communities will be no free thinking individuals who like to test their own ideas and accept every others very bad idea. The American Dream ideology is bogus and really means enslaved sheep.

When will we be honest and refuse this stuff as education at all?

Lets start a new program for free thinking Americans. Idea testing for life, where you test ideas in measurements for or against life to see which ones actually do and which ideas flat out do not. People would be brighter, far more experienced and a lot more willing to inspect ideas being passed around.

Today when I look at educated, I see Washington DC, I see Congress and our Senate. I see Judges and lawyers and leaders in departments. I see Financiers and economist, I see crimes, power abuses and I see tyranny and my biggest view is corporations.

But what I don’t see is sustainable Republics or my Declaration of Independence presented to me daily. I don’t see my constitution used to sustain Liberty so my Republics can flourish and I ask myself all the time, what education are they all talking about because if all the things I do see represent it, its bogus and I refuse to have anything to do with it nor any who support it.

Education from my experience is a life time of experiences and I have learned a great deal and I am able to see what education is not. Idiots don’t legislate education, living and doing facilitates this just fine without the idiots in our vicinity at all.